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A SERMON 



PKKAIIIED IN THE CONGREGATIONAL TABERNACLE, 



JERSEY CfTY, N. J. 



ON TIIK SABBATH BEFORE FOREFATHERS' DAY, 



DECEMBER 17, 1865. 



Z/3^^^ 



.lOIlN MILTON HOLMES, 



Pastor of the Chuech. 



^Icu) ;I)orfi: 

THJHALS & WHITING, 37 PARK HOW. 

1 866. 



lilnsi 



impk-§!itlJ«irg: 



A SERMON 



PREACHED IN THE CONGREGATIOML TABKRNACLE, 



JERSEY CITY, N. J., 



ON THE SABBATH BEFORE FOREFATHERS' DAY, 



DECEMBER It, 1865. 



JOHN MILTON HOLMES, 

Pastor of the Church. 



^\m fiorfi: 

TIBBALS .t WinTL\<;. 37 PARK ROW 

1 8G6. 



ccp y ^ 



The occasion of the discourse, which is now published at the request of 
the Church, is sufficiently indicated by the following resolution, adopted by 
the National Council at Boston, June 24, 1865. 

Resolved, That the Council recommend to the American Congregational Union, with- 
out arresting or delaying the special efforts now in progress, or ready to be put forth in 
behalf of the churches needing aid for the erection of houses of worship, to call for a 
simultaneous collection, December 17, the Sabbath preceding Forefathers' Day, when 
every Congregational church, large or small, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, shall con- 
tribute what it can toward the $200,000 for church building. Let the good work be 
finished in a day, and give the proper punctuation to this meeting." 

By invitation of a considerable number of New Englanders connected 
with the Presbyterian church in Montclair, N. J. — not without the cordial 
courtesy of the pastor, Rev. ]Mr. Millard — the sermon was repeated in that 
place on the evening of the same Sabbath. 



PSALM XLVIII. ]2-i:i 

"Walk about Zion, and go round about her; teli, the towers 
thereof; mark ye well her bulwarks; consider' her pal- 
aces, that ye may tell it to the generathin following." 

That genial and true-hearted messenger of the English 
Churches to the Boston Council, the Eev. Dr. Raleigh, pre- 
sented, upon his return to the mother-land, this fair picture 
of New England, from the summit of Mt. Holyoke : " I 
stood one day on a hill-top near Northampton, commanding 
a vast and various view, one of the finest of the kind in the 
whole world. We had crept up slowly— a gentleman of 
Northampton and myself— for it was a hot Summer day, 
through the leafy woods, now admiring the beauty of the 
foliage and now talking of the past and the present of En- 
gland and America, wlien all at once we emerged from the 
umbrage and stood upon the hill-top. There came to my 
lips in a moment some lines of Thompson's Seasons, which 
had l)een in my memory since boyhood, and which I had 
always thought rather mythical, considered as the descrip- 
tion of an actual scene : 

" 'Heaveus! wliat a g:ooill_v iirospect spreads around. 
Of liills and dales and woods and lawns and spires, 
And glUterinfj towns and jjilded streams, till all 
The streteliiii": landsca])!' into smoke decays.' 

"Thirty Chm'ch-spires are visible from that hill-top to a 
practised eye, every one of them the spire of a parish Church, 
and every one of them Independent." 



' Marp-inal nnte, — " T^aisc up, 



Till-: riijiKi.M ri;.Mi'M:-iirii.i)[;(.><i. 

Then, cominc: down from tlic inoiiiit.iin, this clear-eyed 
observer — this suhj«'ct ot" another rcahii — wrote tliis ustiniate 
of New Enghuid character: "I ouly know this, that my 
impression is that I have never seen anywhere in the worhl 
— not even in this dear Ohl Eni,dand — a state of society on 
the whole so good as I saw in the heart of New England." 
" None are poor to dependence or starvation ; none are igno- 
rant. Their land enriches them with plenty ; their connnon 
schools inform them and enlighten them ; their free religious 
teaching is the power of (^od unto salvation to very many 
of them, and it is a moi'al safeguard to them all." 

Taking a still wider survey of our free institutions, let 
us ask ourselves the question : What is the source of this 
jifospcrity and freedom ; what is it that made New Evgland 
what she is to-day '/ 

Just previous to the great ei-uption of the civil war it 
was my fortune to climb another hill of vision, in one of 
the central counties of Virginia. The j)anorama of nature 
was even grander than that which enfolds the lovel}' valley 
of the Connecticut. Far along from North to South, like a 
huge wall builded by the giants and flanked with dreamy 
towers and buttresses of purple, ran the line of the Blue 
Kidge. On the distant slopes and crags the solemn old 
forests slumbered and nodded to the wind of May. Far 
to the eastward was the white winding ribbon of the James 
River, and nearer, the broad but turbid current of the Kap- 
idan. A single town was visij)le upon the horizon ; the 
remainder of the scene was composed of broad plantations. 
On thes(! the young crops of wheat and tobacco displayed 
tJK.'ir verdant leafage. The peach trees wore their rosy 
bloom ; the air was musical \\ itli the songs of free and 
happy birds, and fragrant with the wealth of umiumbered 
trilx's of forest flowers. Thus did nature lavish her fairest 
charms around that well-worn hill of ]\Fonticello, the rest- 
ing place of Jefterson. 

But how^ diflerent were the moral aspects of the scene 
from that bright New England prosj)ect ! The dearth of vil- 
lages revealed the lack ot eiiter[)ris(\ I'he absiMice of school- 



THE PII.(4RIM TKMPLE-nriLDEHS. 7 

houses betrayed the deeper hick of education. Those phinta- 
tions, so rich and ample, spoke of thousands of wretched 
human beings driven to ceaseless toil, like oxen, with the 
lash. In those aristocratic mansions, rising up proudly out 
of the squalid huts of worse than paupers, the pampered 
owners were even then, on that sweet May morning of I860, 
plotting the blackest crime, save one, which ever stained 
the page of history, — the crime of assassinating the accum- 
ulated freedom of all the ages, that human bondage might 
be eternal. What made that moral picture so different from 
the bright jirospect of New Eiigland? 

The answer to these inquiries is to be found far back, in 
the very origin of the Old Colony and the Old Dominion. 
When the Pilgrims touched the shores of Massachusetts, the 
whole country. North and South, was nanjed Virginia.^ But 
the Virginians of Plymouth Rock were men who had little 
in common with the Virginians of the James River. Two 
settlements of kindred stock were established on the Atlantic 
coast, but from the very beginning it was evident that they 
were as unlike in character as the twins of the patriarch 
Isaac. Two nations were in the womb, and two manner of 
people were separated from the matrix of the mother-hmd. 

The contrast in the character of the two peoples is as 
great as that of the seasons in which they disembarked. 
The Virginians entered the broad waters of the Chesapeake 
unruffled by a stoini, and floated up the silver stream when 
spring was wearing all her wreaths to welcome them. The 
Pilgriujs landed as shipwrecked mariners, in the depth of 
winter, on the ice-bound coast of Plymouth, glad to find a 
rock to give them footino: in the sleet of the December blast. 
The Virginians were vagabond gentlemen, " unprincipled 
young sparks," whom their parents were glad to ship off in 
order to save them from a worse fate at home, " discharged 



' South Virginia extended tVoni Capo Fear to the Potomac, and North 
Virj^iiiia from the moutli of the Hudson to Xewfoiuulland ; the intermediate 
territory was common ground. See Bancroft, i.. l-iH; an-l. more clearly, 
Anier. Cyclop., firt. " I'nitfd States." 



8 THK PH.CKrM TKMI'I.K-IUri.DKKS. 

servants, fraudiileut bauknipts, rakes and debaiiclKTS." ^ 
The Pilgrims were men of irood education and unbleniishe<l 
reputation, and some of them belonged to the intellectual 
nobility of Europe. The Virginians were adventurers, 
averse; to labor, going to a wilderness in which as yet not a 
single house was standing, with forty-eight gentlemen to 
four carpentei-s. The Pilgrims were a band inured to diffi- 
culties, industrious and frugal, eager to wield the axe amid 
the peltings of the storm. The Virginians came singly, as 
the Californian miner goes to seek his fortune, bound to the 
country by no domestic ties. The Pilgrims landed with 
their families, — the germs of patriotism and of virtue. 

"There was woman's earuest eye, 
Lit by lier deep love's truth." 

The A'irginians came with all their laws and institutions 
shut up in a box, by order of King James, witli strict orders 
not to op«;n it till they landed, and lo ! when it was o})ened 
not a single element of popular liberty was to be tbund in 
it. The Pilgrims fashioned tiieir own institutions, and had 
provided for their civil and religious rights before they left 
the cabin of the Mayflower, not in the name of the king, 
but in the name of God. The Virginians came across the 
ocean to chase the mirage of wealth, — the gorgeous dream of 
the Spaniard. "With an ignorance unparalleled even in that 
age of imperfect discovery, they imagined the existence of a 
channel connecting the waters of the Chesapeake with the 
South Sea and its boundless realms of wealth. They actually 
sent up the Chickahonuny an expedition bound for the Pa- 
cific Ocean, in (juest of gold. ^Vnd when at last the}' dis- 
covered some shining mineral which seemed to answer their 
expectations, and sent a load of the worthless earth to Eng- 
land, as Smith said, "there was now no talk, no hope," no 
work but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, load gold." 

lUit, on the otlici- hand, the Pilgrims came with the 



' This is the concurrent testimony of all the historians ot'the colony. Sec 
Bancroft, i.. 11!-. 



THE PILGRIM TEMPLE-BUILDERS. 9 

loftiest purpose recorded in the annals of the race. Inspired 
with an undying love for liberty, mindful of the welfare ot 
posterity, and with souls conscious of a sublime destiny un- 
der the favor of the great Leader whom they served, they 
sailed to these shores impelled by " a hope and inward zeal 
of advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in the re- 
mote parts of the New World, yea, though they should be 
but as stepping-stones unto others for performing so great a 
work." This glorious aspiration brought them across the 
stormy ocean, and when they landed on the snow-clad rocks, 
their first act was to kneel down and take possession of the 
continent in the name and for the sake of Christ. 

The founder of New Haven, far-seeing as all these Puri- 
tans were, thus manifests the piety and the wisdom of the 
first settlers of New England : " They tliat are skillful in 
architecture observe that the breaking or yielding of a stone 
in the groundwork of a building, but the breadth of the 
back of a knife, will make a cleft of more than half a foot 
in the fabric aloft, so important are fundamental errors. The 
Lord awaken us to look to it in time, and send us his light 
and truth to lead us into the safest ways in these begi?i?iingsy^ 

Little did Davenport, when he uttered his fervent prayer, 
imagine that august temple of Freedom which should be 
erected in the coming ages, and little did he perceive that 
in the fundamental principles of the two chief English 
colonies, North and South, there was even then a fissure 
wiiich should crack the temple walls and clea,ve the Union 
almost asunder, till a million patriots should rush in to 
repair the breach. 

This figure of a goodly temple built to Gfod was a favor- 
ite one among our Puritan forefathers, and we are but 
following their own method when we speak of their free 
institutions as towers and bulwarks. On this high day of 
connnemoration service we are summoned by their example, 
no less than by the exhortation of the Psalmist, to go round 
about the Zion which they builded, to tell the towers there- 

' DaveiiiHut. Disi-oiir^e ui)Oii Civil fnivoninicut. 



.10 Ti[K I'ii-(;ki.m ii:mi'i,i:-im ijju'.r.'s. 

of, to mark well hvv bulwarks, to consider her palaces, that 
we may tell it to the generation tbllowing. We have spoken 
in general of tlie character of the Pilgrims, We wish now 
to note more specifically the institutions which they found- 
ed, and which are the towers olall the greatness, moral and 
material, for which New England is reverenced above all 
the peoples of the earth. They are three — the Free Church, 
the Free School, and the Free Commonwealth. 

I. The Pilgrims founded a Fhke Cihrch as the tower of 
religion. 

The Church of England, from its very foundation under 
Henr}' VIIL, contained within it the germs of two parties, 
one desiring to keep as closely as possible to the Romish 
polity and ceremonial as was consistent with a separate 
establishment ; the other inclined to make the refornuition 
more thorough by limiting the prelatical and royal supremacy, 
and by discarding, as "rags of superstition" and hindrances 
to a pure and sj)iritual worship, many of the rites and cere- 
monies still retained in the Anglican Church.^ 

When "Bloody Mary," ascended tlu; throne, many of the 
churchmen bowed before the storm of Papal persecution, 
and recanted or compromised their Protestant [)rinciples. 
But the Puritans stood firm. That illustrious ancestor of 
the Pilgrims, whose death at Smithfield, with his " sweet 
babes " around him, was the first picture which for many 
generations met the eyes of the New England schoolboy — 
Rogers was the protomartyr. While the flames were raging, 
many of tliose who were truly ind)ued with the spirit of the 
gospel fied to the continent, and tbuud refuge in the Protest- 
ant cities of Frankfort and Geneva. Here again were soon 
found the same differences of opinion whiidi had existed in 
England. A controversy arose among the exiles at Frank- 



' " The couii)i"oiiii>se urniiii^ed by Craniiici" luul tVom the first l)eeu consid- 
ered by u large body of Protestants as a scheme tor ser\iiig two uuisters, — as 
uu attempt to unite tlie worsliip of the Lord witl» tiie worshij* of liaal." — 
MtiCHulay, i., 4."), et srr/. 



THE PILliKIM TEMPLK-RUILDERS. 11 

i'ort, between those who coukl conscientiously conform to 
the ritual of the English establishment and those who jire- 
ferred the primitive simplicity of tlie Reformed Churches 
around them. And here at Frankfort, in the year J 5-54, the 
more scrupulous and inflexible of the reformers were tirst 
called Puritans by their adversaries.^ 

The Puritans remained as yet within the bosom of the 
English Church, and shrank from any thought of separation. 
But after the accession of Elizabeth (155S), who was iu 
belief more a Papist than a Protestant, and in temper a true 
daughter of Henry VIII., the breach between tlie Pu- 
ritans and the Establishment was effected by the Queen 
herself.'-^ When in the lower House of Convocation the 
questions were discussed of the observ^ance of Saints' days, 
of the use of the cope and surplice, of kneeling at the com- 
munion, of the sign of the cross in baptism, and matters of 
kindred moment, it appeared that that body was almost 
equally divided, the reformers losing the day by only a single 
vote out of a hundred and seventeen.^ But the Queen 



'Bacon's Hist. Discourses, p. 7; Palfrey, Hist. New England, i., 118; 
Neal, Hist. Puritans, i., 68. Within ten years the name was iu common use 
iu England. Hopkins adopts the later date. Hist. Puritans, i., 232. 

■^ Except Archbishop Parker .... and Cox, Bishoj) of Ely .... all the 
most eminent churclnnen, such as Sewell, Grindal, Sandys, Newell, were in 
favor of leaving off the surplice and what were called the Poj)ish ceremonies. 
Whether their objections are to be deemed narrow and frivolous, or other- 
wise, it is incousisteut with veracity to dissemble that the Qinen alone was 
the cause of retaining those observances to which the great separation from 
the Auglicau establishment is ascribed. — Hallani, Conxt. Hist. Eng., i., 188. 

^ Neal, i., 89. The Puritans at this time com])Osed the majority of the En- 
glish jieople. " I conceive," sa^'s one of the most; accurate and impartial of his- 
torians, " the Church of England party — that is, the party averse to any species 
of ecclesiastical change — to have been the least numerous of the three (Catholic, 
Church of England, Puritan,) duriug this reign; still excepting, as I have 
said, the neutrals, who commonly make a numerical majority and are count- 
ed along with the dominant religion. The Puritans, or at least those who 
rather favored them, had a majority among the Protestant gentry during the 
Queen's days. It is agreed on all lumds, and is quite manifest, that they 
predominated in the House of Commons. But that House was composed, as 
it has ever been, of the principal landed proprietors, and as much represented 
the general wish of the community, when it denuuided a farther reform in 
reliirious matters, as mi mmv utbrr snttjccts. One would imagine, liy tlie 



12 THE I'lI.CKI.M TKMl'LK-Iiril.DKKS. 

looked upon the rights of conscience just us slie regarded 
the enterprises of comniercial speculation. Of botli she 
claimed the monopoly, and all must l)e ordered in ac- 
cordance with her imperious will. Therefore it was she 
issued her imperial edict that no worship should be tolerated 
outside of the Established Chui-ch, and that all who did 
worship should observe every jot aiid tittle of the royal 
ceremonial under penalty of ruinous fines, imprisonment, 
and death.^ 

Then arose in the minds of the Puritans the Pauline 
spirit of independence, and they said : In these matters of 
conscience we give to this woman " no place by subjection, — 
no, not for an hour." They not only opposed the com])ulsorv 
imposition of vain and superstitious observances, and the 
doctrine of passive obedience to royal caprice in matters of 
religion, but they held that they themselves were guilty in 
the sight of God by remaining in communion with a church 
which avowed such pernicious doctrines and practices. Since 
the English Church could not be reformed it ujust be aban- 
doned. They heard the great voice of the Apocalypse 
sounding athwart the heavens, " Come out of her, my people, 
that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not 
of lu;r plagues." 

These w^ere the Puritans of the Puritans, "the dissidents 
of dissent," who demand(;d nothing less than the entire free- 
dom of conscience, and a complete separation from all ob- 
servances opposed to the purity and sim}»licity of the gospel 
of Christ. 

With these convictions a handful of "godly Christians" 



manner in which some express themselves, that the discontented were a siiiall 
faction, who, by some unaccountahle means, in despite of the goverumeut 
and the nation, formed a mnjurity of all Parliaments under Elizabeth and her 
two successors.'' — Hallani, Const. Hist., i., 5i57. 

' Two ministers of tlie gospel were hanged for circulating l?rown's tract 
on the Liherty of the Pulpit. " Both the prisoners diod by their principles; 
for tiioiigli Dr. Still, the archbishop's chaplain, and others travelled (trav- 
ailed) and conferred with them, yet at the very hour of their death they re- 
mained immovable; they were both sound in the doctrinal articles of the Church 
of England, mid nf unldi inished lices.'" — Xeiil. i., l.")4. 



TTIE riLfJRIM TEMPLE-BUILDERS. 13 

in the north of England, in the vilhige of Scrooby, under 
the lead of John Robinson and William Brewster, in the 
year IG0(),^ organized themselves into an independent church 
after the pattern of the Scriptures. Being led by the light 
of God's word to see that the " beggarly ceremonies" were 
monuments of idolatry, and that " the lordly power of the 
prelates ought not to be submitted to," they determined, to 
use their own words, " to shake of this yoake of anti- 
Christian bondage, and as y*^ Lord's free people joyn them- 
selves by a covenant of y'' Lord, into a church estate, in y® 
felowship of y'' gospell, to walke in all his wayes, made 
known or to be made known to them according to their 
best endeaours, ivluitsoever it should cost tJiem.''^^ 

But this Church could not live in England. By the dig- 
nitaries who then presided over the Establishment it was 
regarded with less favor than a den of dicers or coiners, 
and it speedily bi'ought down upon its head the full measure 
of brutal vengeance from the authorities. The scattered 
flock fled to the sea-side, where a vessel was in waiting to 
carry them to Holland. ]jut while the ship was loading, 
when a portion of the emigrants were already on board, a 
])and of horsemen made their appearance on the beach, 
and dragged oft' to the magistrates a large number of 
helpless women and children. " Pitiful it was," says an 
eye-witness,'^ " to see the heavy case of these poor women 
in distress. What weeping and crying on every side!" 
With great difliculty and through much misery the weeping 
band at last rejoined their husbands and fathers, and so at 
last the Pilgrim Church succeeded in finding a refuge in 
the city of Amsterdam. But, like the wandering dove, they 
found no place to rest. Erom Amsterdam they removed to 
Leyden, and there for ten years "their continual labors with 
other crosses and sorrows left them in danger to scatter or 
sink." 

' For the verification of this date, see Palfrey, i., 134, Note. 
- Bradford's Plinioth Phiutation, ([noted by Dexter, Coiigref^ationalisni, 
p. 58. 

•' Bradford. Sec I'alfrcv, i., i:?H. 



14 Tirp: I'lLCKIM IKMI'LK-r.III.DERS, 

They felt that in a lijieiirn coiuitrv there was danger of 
forgetting the language and the name (»!' tiieir heloved father- 
land. They fonnd themselves unabh* to give their chi-ldren 
an education .such as they had themselves received, and they 
were grieved at the irreligionof the Dutch, especially in the 
profanation of the Sabbath.^ It might be that in the un- 
iidiabited regions of the New Worhl they could find a prom- 
ised land for themselves and their ])osterity. Accordinglv, 
they broke up their associations with the ])eople, who loved 
them and esteemed them.- The pastor Robinson who re- 
mained behind with a portion of the flock gave them a 
solemn farewell charge." They feasted at the pastor's lioiise, 



' Three main reasons are given by Winsiow (Briefe Narration) for their 
leaving Holland. 1. "They were like to lose their language and their name 
of English." 2. " How little good they did or were like to do to the Dutch 
in reforming the Sabbath." i?. " How unable there to give such education 
to their children as they had themselves received." 

- " The magistrates testified, ' These English have lived among us now 
these twelve years, and yet we never had any suit or accusation come against 
any of them.' " — Bradford, 20. " The merchant.? of Amsterdam presented a 
memorial to the Prince of Orange to encourage Robinson's company to emi- 
grate to the Dutch settlements in America." — Brodhead, Hist. New York, i., 
125. Many of the Dutch joined the Pilgrim Church. See Winsloic, I>5. 

•' The farewell counsel of liobiusou breathes such a noble, and for that 
age wonderful, spirit of mingled liberty and charity, that I cannot njfrain 
from quoting Winslow's Narration at length: 

" We are now ere long to part asunder, and the Lord knoweth whether 
ever he should live to see our faces again. But whether the Lord had ap- 
pointed it or not, he charged us before God and his blessed angels to follow 
him no farther than he followed Christ, and if God should reveal anything to 
\is by any other instrument of his, to be as ready to receive it as ever we 
were to receive any truth by his ministi-y ; for he was very coniident tlie Lord 
had more truth and light yet to break forth out of his Holy Word. He took 
occasion also miserably to bewail the state and condition ot tlie Keformed 
Churches who were come to a period in religion, and would no further go 
than the iustrumeuts of their Reformation. As, for exaUiple, the Lutherans ; 
they could not be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw, for whatever part of 
God's will He had farther imparted and revealed unto Calvin, they will rather 
die than embrace it. And .so al.so saith he. You see the Calvinists; they stick 
where he left them — a misery much to be lamented — for tlu>ugh they were 
precious shining lights in their times, yet God hath not revealed his whole 
will unto them, and were they now living, saith he, they would be as ready 
and willing to embrace farther light than that they had received. Here also 
he put us in mind of our Church covenant, at least tlmt jiart of it whereby 



THK I'lLOKIM TEArPLE-BFTT.DKRS. lo 

then, having been refreshed after tlieir tears by the singing 
of psalms, the}^ embarked upon the peiilous voyage, and in 
the fulness of the time the Mayflower anchored in the bay 
of Massachusetts, and the Pilgrims landed upon Plymouth 
Rock. 

Wliat, now, was the nature of this Pilgrim Church, des- 
tined to exert so mighty an influence in all time to come ? 
Its cardinal principle of polity was that the particular 
Church is an equal brotherhood of believers, amenable to no 
head but Christ. Our fathers held that every such Church 
is independent of any outward jurisdiction or control, 
whether of popes, kings, bishops, or of any ecclesiastical 
authority; that it is competent to constitute and maintain its 
own oiganization, to elect its own pastor and other officers, 
to execute its own discipline, to determine its own mode of 
worship, to direct its own internal affairs, and that, for the 
proper discharge of th<^se Christian functions, it is responsible 
to Christ alone.^ 

When the Pilgrims sent their messengers from Leyden 
to London, in the vain hope of obtaining a chai'ter for their 
colony, the councilors asked, "Who shall be your minister?" 
To the great astonishment of the council, the envoys an- 
swered, " The power of making them is in the Church." 
This is the language of Robinson : " The Lord Jesus is the 
king of His Church alone, upon whose shoulders the govern- 
ment is, and unto wiiom all power is given in heaven and 
earth.." And Higginson of Salem, a town partly colonized 
from PIvmouth, declares, " This was f)ur cause in coming 



we promise and covenant with God and one another, to receive whatsoever 
lio^lit or truth sliall be made known to ns from his written word; hut 
withal exhorted us to take heed what we received for truth, and well to 
examine and compare it, and weig-h it with other Scriptures of truth before 
we received it. For, saith he, it is not possible the Christian world should 
come so lately out of such antichristian darkness, and that full perfection of 
knowledge should break forth at once." 

^ See a full array of authorities in that invaluable book, Dexter's Congre- 
{ratioualism, p. 4;i, note. See, also, the resume of Jiradshaw's Puritanism, 
in Neiil, i.. •24^'. 



10 TlIK PILORIM TEMPLE-HUILDERS. 

here, that Christ alone niiy;ht be ackiiuwlt'dired bv lis as iho 
only Head, Lord, and Lawgiver." 

Were this the place for such an argument, it might be 
clearly shown that this free constitution of the Church is in 
strict conformity with the teaching of the Scriptures, which 
our tathei's took for their iiifallil>le "uide. ]*)ut omittinu; 
these considerations, we proceed to ask, What were the 
fruits of this Pilgrim Church, and what its iuHuence upon 
the spiritual destiny of New England ? More especially, 
How did it fulfill the proper functions of a Church of Christ 
in defending the truth, in promoting piety, and in bringing 
men to the reception of the gospel as it is in Jesus? 

Two centuries ;ind a half have roHcd away, and the muse 
of histor}' stands ready with her answer. Nowhere in all 
the world — not even among the children ol" the covenanters, 
in the green vales of Scotland — are the inhabitants charac- 
terized by such sobriety, frugality, industry, and purity. No- 
where is God's word so read and honored. Nowhere, when 
that Sabbath comes on which the Pilgrims rested, does the 
church-bell, with its sweet evangel, call forth so many wor- 
shippers to the temples of the Lord. Nowhere sinee the 
Pentecost have been experienced with greater power those 
gracious visitations of the Spirit, whose most memorable 
type is the "Great Awakening" described by the peli of 
Edwards. Nowhere is so large a proportion of the entire 
population gathered into the Churches of Christ. 

And if we proceed to ask, A\'hat have these Churches 
done beyond themselves for the welfare of mankind, we are 
still ready with the answer. New England has been fore- 
most in the inauguration of those great benevolent and 
religious institutions which now girdle the world with their 
benignant charities. Do you honor that noble Society 
which aims to send the Bible, without note or conmient, to 
every famih' in the land, and whicli, -aWw translating the 
word of God into unnund)ered lanuiiaiies, is now seiidini:: it 
from the presses of America to the hundred millions who 
speak the Arabic V Remember that bei'ore the existence of 
the metropolitan institution, a ]5ible Society had been al- 



« TIIK PTI.(!l{m TKMPLE-BriLDEnS. 17 

ready foniiod in ]\rassachusetts and another in Connecti- 
cut/ 

Do you look with favor upon that Home Missionary 
Society whicli lias planted the gospel in almost every county 
of the boundless West "/ That, too, was organized by the 
New England Churches ; and tlie General Court of Massa- 
chusetts, two centuries earlier, was the first Missionary 
Society in the annals of Protestant Christendom." 

Are you interested in the work of Sabbath Schools ? In 
1781, the same year in which Robert Raikes began his apos- 
tolic work in England, the children were gathered for 
religious instruction on Sunday noons, under the branching- 
elms in the village of Washington, Connecticut.'" But a 
hundred years l:»efore Raikes was born, the Sabbath School 
was in successful operation in the Pilgrim Church at 
Plymouth.^ 

Do you regard the Temperance Reformation as intimately 
connected with tht^ interests of religion '! Massachusetts and 
Connecticut are rivals for the honor of its birth.'' Have j^ou 



' Amer. Cyclop., art., " Bible Societies." The American Bible Society 
was I'ormed iu 1816, throuoh the instrumentality of Hon. Elias Bondinot of 
New Jersey. The Massachusetts Society was formed in 18U9. Under the aus- 
pices of Eliot the famous Indian Bible, the lirst Bible printed in America, 
was issued at Cambridge in in():i, having been three years in press. 

- The Home Missionary Society formed in 1826 was in reality only a consol- 
idation of the New Eughmd Au.xiliaries. " In thirty years from the arrival 
of the Pilgrims, tive Churches had expanded into more than forty, and were 
actually supporting fifty-tive ministers." " Home Missions were pushed 
with such vigor, that cases are related of the erection of meeting-houses 
' whore the entire population of the place could sit together on the sills at the 
raising.'" — Rev. H. B. Hooker, in Report Howe Missionary Soriffy, 1864. 

" The General Court of Massachusetts was thus (1646) the first Mission- 
ary Society in the history of Protestant Christendom." — Halfrey, ii., 189. 

■' Rev. Dr. Hawes, in Contrib. to Eccles. Hist, of Conn., p. 191. 

■• As early as 1680 the Plymouth Church passed a vote in these words: 
"That the deacons be re(iuested to assist the minister in teaching the chil- 
dren during the intermission on the Sabbath." Rev. T. Robbins, D. D., in his 
address at W^illiams' College, says that he has seen an authentic account of a 
Sunday School at Plymouth, in 1669. — Cong. Qtiar. Jan., ISbo, p. 2\. 

" Both Massachusetts and Connecticut may well contend for precedence 
in the Temperance movement." — Dr. J. Marsh. 

Dr. Porter's famous sermon on "The Fatal Effects of Ardent Spirits," 



18 Till-: liLCIJIM TKMri.K-IUII.DKKS. 

ever thoiiglit with wondt-r on that Aiiicricaii Board of 
Conmiissioners for Foreign Missions, which has dotted every 
continent with Christian institutions, which has elevated 
savage tribes from the lowest depths of pagan barbarism to 
the dignity of Christian nations, and which, making the 
coral islands of the Pacific its stepping-stones, has gone lorth 
to the spiritual concpiest of the habitable globe "/ It was 
originated in the study of a descendant of the Pilgrims, 
not far fioni tlie rock on which they landed fis a mission 
Church.^ 

Thus, then, that ancestral Church in the wilderness, con- 
taining within it such wondrous germs of power, is invested 
for us with a mysterious and transcendent glory. It needs 
no warrant from a persecuting bishop to constitute it more a 
Church of Christ than what it is. Those heroic saints cel- 
ebrating their first Sabbath in tlie New Enijland snows, 
are truer successors of the apostles than any created l)y 
the imposition of an earthly hand. Their strain of wor- 
ship, ringing amid the pines, shall never cease to vibrat<' 
through the heavens till it melt away in tlie blast of the 
resurrection. xVnd that rude sanctuary, hewn of logs, on 
whose top the three cannon were planted at the Indians, is 
a grander and more sacred temple than any minster or ca- 
thedral with its broad aisles and sumptuous altars, its lofty 
arches resounding with the organ's diapason, and its storied 
windows, where the forms of saints and angels keep solemn 
ward over the dust of kings who sleep below. 

II. Xo sooner had the Pilgrims constituted their Church 
and built its house of worship, than they founded the Frek 
School, to be the tower of education. 

A governor of Virginia is recorded to have uttered his 



whicli giive tlic first iiii])ulsi' to tlie Tcinjioiaiu'c uioveiufut in Coniiecticiii, 
was preached iu the winter of IHOfi. The Miissaclmsetts .Soeiety for the 
Suppression of luteniperaiice was organized in I'^i:?. 

' At Audover, 18UU. Tiie Board received its orgauizntion from tlie Gen- 
eral Association of the Congregational Churches of Massachusetts, at Brad- 
ford, '^'.Itli Jmic. IHId. 



THE PII.OKIAF Ti::\IPLE-lU-ILr)ET?S. 19 

thanksgiving to God that in that commonwealth there 
were no printing presses nor free schools.^ John Eliot, 
tlie apostle to the Indians, in a prayer before the General 
(Jourt of Massachnsetts, in 1645, thus reversed the desire of 
Berkeley: "Lord! for schools everywhere among us ! That 
our schools may flourish. That every member of this As- 
sembly may go home and procure a good school to be en- 
couraged in the town where he lives. That before we die 
we may be so happy as to se<* a good school in every plan- 
tation in the country.""^ The spirit of the prayer of Eliot 
was earl}^ framed into appropriate legislation. "In nothing," 
says De Tocqueville, "is the original character of American 
civilization shown more clearly than in the mandates relating 
to education.""' One of the earliest of these laws contained 
th(; tbllowing provision : " To the end that all learning may 
not l)e buried in the graves of our forefathei's, ordered that 
every township, after the Lord hath increased them to fifty 
householders, shall appoint one to teach all the children to 
read and write, and \^diere any town shall increase to the 
nuujber of one hundred families, they shall set up a grannnar 
school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so 
far as they may be fitted for the university."'* Another or- 
dinance provided that in every town the selectmen should 
use all vigilance to insure that every householder teach, by 
himself or others, their children and apprentices so much 
learning as should enable them to read the English tongue 
and obtain a knowledge of the laws."' If, for any reason, the 
parent neglected to instruct his offspring, he was subjected 
to a fine, and the children were educated under the direction 



' Sir Wm. Berkeley-, iu 167(1, iu reply to the inquiries addressed to liiiu 
by the Lords of IMautatious, says, " 1 tliank God there are no free schools nor 
printing, aud I hope we shall not liavc them these hundred years, tor learn- 
ing- has brought disobedience, and iieresy, and sects into the world, and 
printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God 
keep us from both I ' — Uinning's Laws of I'irginiti, Appendix. 

- Morris. Cliristian Life, &v., of the United States, p. 7;{. 

■' Demoeracy iu America, i., oL 

^ Colonial I>a\v.s. n>47. Hancroft. i., 4")^. 

■"' I'alfrev. i.. Hi. 



20 Tfir: i'ii,(;ki.m 'ii;Mi'rj:-i;i r[,i»[:r{s. 

of tlie town authorities.^ " In tliose nieasurcs," sa3's Pjancroft, 
"especially in the laws estahlishiiig couimoii schools, lies the 
secret of the success and <liiiiacter of New Enfflantl. Every 
child, as it was horn into the world, was lifted from the earth 
hy the genius of the country, and in the statutes of the land 
received as its birthright a pledge of the public care for its 
morals and its mind."" 

Six years only after the; first settlement in Massachusetts 
Bay the colonists laid in Cambridge the foundation of a c()l- 
lege. The mainici- in which it was begun is as striking as 
anything in the annals of edui^ation. 

" The magistrates led tht; way by a snl)scri])tion among 
themselves of two hundred pounds for the library. The 
comparatively w<'althy ibllowed with gifts of twenty and 
thiity pounds. The needy multitude succeeded, like the 
widow of old casting their mites in the treasury. A number 
of shee[) was be([Ut'athed by one man; a ([iiantity of cotton 
cloth, worth nine shillings, was presentr'd by another ; a 
pewter tlagon, worth ten shillings, b}' a third ; a fruit dish, 
a sugar-spoon, a silver-tipt jug, one great set and one smaller 
trencher set, by others." =' 

This was the beginning. In the wilderness, before even 
their own houses weve ceiled and plastered, these New Eng- 
landers provided schools and libraries and academies and 
colleges, in order that the great ends of a free Christian com- 
monwealth might not be frustrated through the ignorance of 
the people. 

Take then your journey through that wilderness, now 
blooming as the rose, and witness the fiuition of the toil ot 
the Fathers. The whoh; land is laid (tut in educational <lis- 
tricts, and in every disti'ict, at a convcnienr center, stands, 
with its whitt! trimming, the neat red school-house, humming 
with the presence of all the children in the conununity. In 
the villaue, rises by the green the free academy, w ifh its 
su[»erior instruction, its libraiy, inid its modest scientihc ap- 



' Code of l()r.n. '-^ Bancroft, i., 45l>. 

^ Mollis, Cluisiiiiii Lite, Siv., ol' tlie llnitcJ Slatos, ji. 7 4. 



THE PILGRIM TEMrLE-BUILDERS. 21 

paratus. At Easthampton, at Exeter, at Andover, and a 
score of other towns, tlie poorest boy ma}^ obtain the prepa- 
ration for the university, which in other lands is attainable 
only by the sons of the wealthy and the noble. And that 
college at Cambridge, which began with flagons and trenchers 
in the woods, no larger than a district school, to-day sends 
forth its ambassadors of science to a distant empire,^ holding 
the majestic Amazon in its bosom, to be welcomed by the 
sovereign as royal guests, and sped on their way in ships of 
war and state, to record the wondrous history of creation in 
the circling ages ere man himself was born. 

Or if you will have the result of the wisdom of the 
fathers in more tangible statistics, the proportion of white 
adults over twenty years of age, unable to read and write, is, 
in the commonwealth of Berkeley, one to every twelve ; in 
New Jersey it is one to every fifty-eight ; in Massachusetts 
it is one to every one hundred and sixty-six. In States less 
subject to the influx of foreign ignorance, the census is still 
more favoi^able. In Vermont the proportion is one to every 
four hundred and seventy-three; and in Connecticut, one 
to every five hundred and sixty-eight ! ^ 

One of the favored sons of New England, having wan- 
dered back to the land of his ancestors, and having, first of 
all Americans, been presented with the freedom of the city of 
London, remembered his native town and the little school- 
house in which he laid the foundation of all his fortune. 
He sent the old town of Danvers twenty-five thousand dol- 

1 The recent expedition of Prof. Agassiz to Brazil. 

'•^ Census of 1850. If I have said no more of Connecticut and other New 
England States, it is not because they do not deserve it, but because of 
the limits of the occasion. In its magnificent provision for popular educa- 
tion, Connecticut has long led the world. One of its " Bliie Laws " provided 
that, " The Selectmen, on finding children ignorant, may take them away 
from their parents and put them into better hands, at the expense of their 
parents." And Yale College (chartered 1701), which, of all the seats of 
learning in the land, has done most " Cliristo et ecclesuc/^ would have been 
founded half a century earliorbut for the fear of weakening the sister institution 
in Massachusetts Bay. Within nine years from the landing of Davenport the 
lot was reserved for the future college. The zeal for learning among the 
New Haven colonists was excelled only by their magnanimity. 



22 TTIE I'TLCHIM TEMI'LE-Brif^DERS. 

lars to establish a library, and then rwciity-livc thousand 
dollars to build a literary institute ; and when his niuuiticent 
tlouations were converted into these fair tcMiiples of learning, 
and Mr. Peabody himself came to attend the celebration, the 
people stretched across the street a banner bearing this 
sentiment of the illustrious donor: ''Education, the debt 
which the inesent oivts the future.'''' 

That royal benefactor learned his lesson of the Pilgrims. 
All the way from Plymouth Rock to the last school-house 
fashioned by New England emigrants, towards the setting 
sun, extends the glorious legend, " Edi cation', the debt 

WHICH THE PRESENT OWES THE FUTFKE." Our fathers 

acknowledged the mighty debt, and lu'cause they paid it, 
and paid it so completely. New England sits enthroned and 
mighty on her native hills; her granite rocks transformed to 
fruitful gardens; her rivers, whirling their million spindles, 
changed to streams of gold ; her white-winged ships darting- 
straight as ocean birds to every haven, through every clime; 
her proclamations to thanksgiving ringing from ten thousand 
Sabbath-bells; her inviolate love of freedom sanctified by 
reverence for law; the eternal monument of the wisdom and 
sacrifice, the faith and the hope of the Pilgrims, justifying 
of all the challenge of her greatest orator in vindication of 
her first-born State, " There is New England. There is her 
history; the woild knows it by heart." 

in. We are to speak now of the third great institution 
which our lathers founded — The Free Common WEAi/rn, to 
be the tower of Law. 

Many of you have seen the picture hanging in the parlor 
connected with this place of worship, called the "Signing 
ol" the Compact." It is of no juore than oi'dinary merit as a 
work of art; and yet how sui-passingly grand are the asso- 
ciations which it awakens. By the light descending through 
the hatchway of the Mayflower we discover the features of 
the founders of the nation. There, pen in hand, is the wise 
and saintly Bradford, wh(» in advancing age studied most of 
all the Hebrew, "because he would see with his own eyes the 



TTFE PIL0RT:\I TE:\rPLE-BITTL])ETJS. 20 

oracles of Grod iu their native beauty." There is the gen- 
erous Winslow, the future historian of the colony, and Car- 
ver, soon to be its governor, and, alas, too soon its martyr. 
There is Miles Standish, the Great-heart of the Pilgrimage, 
clad in armor and leaning on his sword. There, too, is 
Brewster, "seasoned with the seeds of grace and virtue," 
stretching forth his hand to heaven. Every thought of that 
goodly company is obviously intent upon the document 
which lies spread out upon the table. It is the constitution 
of a free and Christian conjmonwealth, and is in these mem- 
orable words : 

" In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are 
underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign King 
James, having undertaken for the glory of God and advance- 
ment of the Christian faith and honor of our king and coun- 
try a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts 
of Virginia, do by these presents solemnh' and mutually, in 
the presence of God and one of another, covenant and com- 
bine ourselves together into a civil bod}'^ })olitic, for our bet- 
ter ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends 
aforesaid, and by virtue hereof, to enact, constitute, and 
frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions 
and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most con- 
venient for the general good of the colony. Unto which we 
promise all due submission and obedience." ^ 

Here, then, in the cabin of the Mayflower, we see dis- 
tinctly recognized, for the first time in the progress of liberty, 
tiie fundamental principle of the right of the people to self- 
government. Henceforth the light breaks in upon the dark 
ages of humanity. Not in royal charters, nor in the enact- 
ments of a proud and privileged aristocracy, but in njan as 
man — in every man created in the image of God — inheres 
the right to provide for his own libei'ties as a citizen and 
his own untrannueled worshij) as a member of the body of 
Christ. Here in this immortal instrument is the record of a 
consecration and a coronation, by which all mankind are 



' l?!U)ci(.fr. i., 300. 



24: THI-: riL(;RrA[ TEMl'LE-UriLDKRS. 

exalted to be kiuij.s and priests unto Gotl ; liere is the pri- 
mordial germ ol that victorious eiDpire which now spans the 
continent after our last solemn struggle for free institutions, 
as the rainbow smiles upon the retreating storm.^ 

Under this sell-made charter the Pilgrims elected their 
governor and all necessary officers of justice; enacted all 
laws and executed them ; and did, in general, all that jH-r- 
tains to the welfare of a free and independent couniioiiwealth. 
Similar constitutions were framed by the sctth'rs in ^lassa- 
chusetts Bay and in the other New England colonies. 

It has not escaped the notice of the clearest foreign 
writer upon " Democracy in America," that the New Eng- 
land township is the unit from which all our national insti- 
tutions have been multiplied. "The independence of the 
township," says De Tocqueville, " was the nucleus round 
which the local interests, passions, rights, and duties col- 
lected and clung. It gave scope to the activity of a real 
political life, thoroughly democratic and republican. The 
colonies still recognized the supremacy of the mother coun- 
try. ]\Ionarchy was still the law of the State, but the re- 
public was already established in every township."^ When, 
in a subsecjuent generation, the elder Adams was meditating 
upon the proper mechanism of a federal union, which should 
bind together the thirteen colonies in harmony and liberty 
for the common good, he found the New England township 
ready as the model of the State, which, while independent 
in its own affairs, should be subordinate to the general gov- 
ernment in all those central powers and functions which 
belons: to our existence as a nation ; and the town meeting 
itself, in which every citizen of every rank directly partici- 
pates in the responsibilities of government — electing muni- 
cipal officers, and enacting munici[)al laws — has been the 
normal school in which millions of the teachers of our 
freedom have themselves been taught. 

'"As the Pilgrims lauded, their institutions wcro already perfected. 
Democratic liberty aud independent Christian worship at once existed in 
America." — Bancroft, i., 313. 

- De Tocqueville, i., 50. 



THE PILGRIM TEMPLE-BUILDERS. 25 

Two principles tire especially conspicuous in these insti- 
tutions of the Pilgrims : one, their true estimate of the dig- 
nity of man; the other, their reverence for law. They had 
learned in the Word of God that all men were created of 
one blood, to dwell upon the face of the whole earth. As 
God was the father of all, so Christ was the saviour of all, 
without respect to rank or race. Heretofore there had been 
rights for rulers, rights for priests, rights for nobles, rights 
for favored guilds and corporations, rights for men, — but no 
rights of man. The nations had heretofore been constructed 
on the model of Nebuchadnezzar's image, — the head was of 
gold, the breast and arms of silver, the thighs of brass, the 
legs of iron, and the feet of clay. The Puritan iconoclast 
smote down the image with the stone of justice, and in its 
stead set up a living man. A signal illustration of this truly 
Christian estimate of humanity is afforded in the shrewd an- 
swer of Cotton to several w^ell-disposed English lords, who 
made some overtures for emigration on condition that their 
hereditary rank should be recognized by the laws: "Where 
God blesseth any branch of any noble or generous family with 
a spirit and gifts fit for government, it would be a taking of 
God's name in vain to put such a talent under a bushel, and a 
sin against the honor of magistracy to neglect such in our 
public elections. But if God should not delight to furnish some 
of their posterity with gifts fit for magistracy, we should ex- 
pose them rather to ^Jrejudice and reproach, and the common- 
wealth with them, than exalt them to lionor, if we should 
call them forth whom God doth not to public authority." ^ 
And so it was that we never had any English lords in 
America, but instead of them New England men. 

In accordance with this view of the intrinsic nobility of 
man was their judgment concerning human slavery. In the 
fundamental code of the colony, adopted in December, lG4i, 
we find this memorable declaration : " There never shall be 
any bond-slavery, villanage, or captivity among us, unless 
it be lawful captives in just wars, and such strangers as wil- 



' Pdltrov, i., :?'.>( I. 



20 Tin: I'lMililM rKMl'LK-IUir.DKKS. 

llnghj sell tlit'iiisc'lvrs, or an; sold unto us, and tliest' shall 
have all the liberties and Christian usages wliich the law of 
God established in Israel concerning such persons doth 
morally require." ^ In other words, according to the awful 
meaning which we have learned to attach to the term, there 
could be no slavery at all. The service of a negro "stran- 
ger" was based upon a contract for a term of years, to 
which the servant was a consenting party. He was in pos- 
session of the same immunities as tln^ white apprentice who 
was indentured for his passage money. At the expiration 
of his apprenticeship, the servant was not to be sent away 
empty. When thus enfranchised the negro enjoyed all the 
rights of citizenship. He was called njutn to beai- arms in 
the militia, was an ecpial witness in courts of justice, could 
inherit, hold, and devise property, and, if a inendjer of the 
Church, might even exercise the right of sidfrage, from 
which his former master, if a non-connnunicant, would be de- 
l)arred. Whatever may have been the violations of the law, 
no person was ever born into legal slaver}^ in any of the New 
England States."^ 

When, a little later, two ]\rassachu setts men, one of them 
a member of the Church in Boston, attempted to engage in 
that odious traffic in mankind which the southern colonists 
found so profitable, the criminals were arrested, as soon as 
they landed, as offenders against the law of God and the law 
of the country, and, "after advice with the elders, the reprt>- 
sentatives of the people, bearing witness against th«! heinous 
crime of man-stealing, ordered the negroes to be restored, at 
the public charge, to their native country, with a letter ex- 
pressing the indignation of the Gcuieral Court at their 
wrongs."'' Even in that benighted age, when oppression in 



1 Pancroft, i., 4J8. 

■^ For ii suinuiary of proof see Palfroy, ii., :5(l. Tlie Coiiiiec-tic-ut law was 
copied from tlie Massachusetts Body of Liherties. Tlic New Haveu Code 
was siuiilar, being based upon tlie Scriptures. Khode Island had an express 
statute "that uo black uiankiud nor white" should be forced, "by covenant, 
bond, or otherwise, to serve any man or his assigns longer than ten years." 

■' liancroft, i., 17J. 



THE PU.(!HIi\r TEMPLE-miLDKliS. 27 

its varied Ibnns was all but uuiv^ersal, when great cities and 
kings were rivals in the slave-trade, and when even so good a 
man as William Penn lived and died a slaveholder, one voice 
was heard a full century before the time, "the voice as of 
one crying in the wilderness," preparing the way in those 
mighty revolutions of opinion which have culminated in the 
destruction of the slave-trade, in the proclamation of emanci- 
pation, and now in that Constitutional Amendaient, which 
sums up four gigantic years of sacrifice in one golden line of 
law, whose sound has gone forth into all the world. It is 
the voice of New England. And anv New Englander who, 
living in these " foremost files of time," nevertheless loves 
oppression, who defends that organic and organific sin which 
dishonors God b}^ dehumanizing man, or who denies to any 
of the enfranchised race the essential prerogatives of man- 
hood, is recreant to his birthright and shames the memory of 
his fathers. All thai is good of him is underground. 

The other great element of tlie Puritan freedom was 
reverence for law. The first settlers of New England came 
not hither to evade authority, for the liberty of doing what 
was good in each man's eyes. They looked upon society as 
of divine establishment, and upon law as the divine mandate. 
Nowheie was there a more law-abiding communitv. No- 
wdiere was the sword of justice so nuich a teiTor to evil 
doers. Governor Winthrop, amid the acclamations of his 
electors, declared, with fine discrimination, " Liberty is the 
proper end and object of authority, and cannot exist without 
it, and it is a liberty onlij to that which is Just and good and 
honest. This Liberty you are to stand tor, with the hazard 
not only of your goods, but of your lives if need be. What- 
soever crosseth tliis is not authority, but a distem])er 
thereof." ' 

The Liberty which AVinthrop praises is the Liberty 
which is consistent with the general welfare of mankind — 
the Liberty which is regulated by righteous laws and insti- 
tutions — the Liberty for which his descendant in the seventh 

I BiniiTuft, i.. 43l>. 



2S THK riijiiii.M Ti:MrLK-i5rrij)EK«. 

generation, Theodore Winthrop, obediently stood, " with 
the hazard not only of his goods, 1)nt of his life," and fell 
upon the Virginian ]>attle-field. That other lii)erty, which 
he condennis as crossing this, is that lawless violence which 
despised the constitution, and strove to destroy the noblest 
heritage of man to gratify the impulse of a mad ambition. 
He is warning us against the distemper of secession and the 
guilt of treason to humanity. 

These principles and these institutions New England, in- 
trenched within JH.'r tower of law, has always been (|ni(;k 
and strong to guard. Liberty was more than a princi[»h' ; 
it was a passion. Any sacrifice of wealth or comfort, or of 
dearest earthly ties, might be made without a mumiur ; but 
if one iota of her libertv were endancrered, she drew her 
sword and stood defiant. When her prosperity us a free 
colony had excited the jealousy and vv^rath of Charles I., and 
a commission was appointed in 1():U to regulate her politics 
and establisli laws for the government of Church and State, 
her spi)"it was thoroughly aroused. It was rumored that a 
royal governor was on the way. Then, poor as were the 
infant settlements, they raised six hundred pounds to fortify 
the harbors, and the ministers, convened in Boston, declared 
unanimously, " we ought to defend our lawful possessions if 
we are able," adding, with a Yankee shrewdness, "if not able 
to avoid and protract." ^ But Charles soon had other work 
to attend to beside subduing the colonies, for the Puritan 
called Cromwell was marshalling the stern Ironsides who 
never lost a battle. 

So, in the Providence of God, the little New England 
colony, max'niue gcnfis i/icini/ihiila, forgotten amid the stormy 
events which were shaking England and all Europe, had 
time to grow, and nmture her institutions and consolidates 
her strength, so that henceforth no tyranny on earth could 
overthrow then). 

Little did George the Third understand the character of 
the New England institutions and the spirit of the peoj^le, 

' Hdiicnift, i.. -4(17. 



niE IMLCIMM TKMPLK-IU'ILDKl.'S. 29 

wlieu he endeavored to wrest away their iuniieiiiorial birth- 
right and deprive them ot" tlie right of se'lf-government by 
the might of an armed soldiery. They hesitated, they re- 
monstrated, they petitioned ; but when the decisive moment 
came, the}^ hesitated not. They took down the ohl musket 
from its resting-place, and, hasting from the parting kiss of 
heroic wives and mothers, marched through the night to 
Lexington. And on that Apiil morning which succeeded, 
the "embattled farmers" stood upon the green, undaunted 
by the foe. They fired the signal gun of Independence, and 
from that moment they rested not, through seven long years 
of blood, till the starry flag unfurled at (.'ambridge was the 
symbol of a free and sovereign people. 

And there was another April morning, dark and sad, 
which we all remember, when southern traitors threatened 
to quench half the stars in the blue heaven of freedom — a 
solemn nioi-ning, when the foe had boasted that ere May 
their perjured hosts should take possession of the capitol — 
a desperate morning, when the breathless nation was waiting 
for the tramp of its defenders ; then it was, by a coincidence 
so striking that it seemed a special ordering of Providence, 
the anniversaiy of Lexington found the New England men 
all ready for the conflict. They left the field unplowed, the 
store untiMided ; the}' forgot the wedding and th«; funeral, as 
in the olden time ; they could hear nothing but the voice of 
Freedom sunmioning them to hnish what the Pilgrims had 
begun. Other patriots were not delin((uent in hasting at 
the call ; but, to the end of time, to New England will be- 
long the glory of being first in preparation, first in response, 
first in that immortal roll of martyrs who, at Baltimore and 
Shiloh and (Gettysburg and Richmond, above the clouds 
at Chattanooga, and in the rigging of the ships at jMobile, 
hurled tliemselves against secession ; the first of that great 
sacrifice of three hundred thousand slain, by whose death 
the nation lives, and not only lives, but s/uill live, with 
every fetter shivered and every taint of treason burnt out 
with battle-lightning, "pure as flu- naked heav»'ns," and 
established on PIviiinuth IJock. 



30 TIIK I'lLCKIM TK^rrLE-RIIl^DERS. 

These, tlien, are the institutions of New England — the 
free Church, the free sch(jol, and rlic free connnonwealth. 
These are the stronir towers, the lofty hulwarks of the Zion 
which the I'ilgrims builded for the generations following, 
beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth. With 
gratitude and filial reverence, we go back to the sacrificial 
years in which, like the ancient temple-builders, they la- 
bored in the work, " half of them holding the; spears from 
the rising of the morning till the; stars appeared." And 
when the towers of fre(Hl()m's sanctuary at last shoot up above 
the forests of the wihlerness, we seem to hear the [)salm of 
dedication in the resounding stave of the old version of 
Sternhold and Hopkins : 

"Go walke about all Syou hill, yoa roiirul about licr go, 
And tell the towres that thereupon are buikled in a roe ; 
And niarke you well her bulwarks all, behold her towres there. 
That ye may tell thereof to them that after shall be here ; 
For this God is our God, foreverniore is Hee; 
Yea, and unto the Death also, our gnidcr shall Tie be." 

These are the New England institutions. Are they worth 
preserving ? Ar^i tlieij ivorth extendrng ? 

Generation after generation had passed away above the 
dreamless sleep of the Pilgrims. Sixteen hundred became 
eighteen hundred, and the snows of December were changed 
to the flowers and new-mown grass of June, when the de- 
scendants of the Plymouth colonists, having just emerged 
victorious from a dread Rebellion, gathered from all the land 
the delegates of three thousand Pilgrim (Uim-ches, to consid(^r 
what next duty was di'iuanded of them by tlieir country and 
their Saviour. It was nothing less than the establishment 
of free and Christian institutions throughout all that conti- 
nent which their fathers had consecrated to Christ. They 
went in reverent pilgrimage to the graves of the forefathers. 
They stood on P)urial Hill, and there, with the rolling ocean 
which had Ixh'ii ploughed by the ]\Iaytlower before them, 
with the mouldering dust of the saints beneath them, and 
the cloudless canopy of heaven above them — on such an 



THE PILGRHI TEMPLE-BUILDERS. .']! 

altar, in such a sbrine, on such a day — they registered their 
vow to be true to the faith of the fathers. 

With such an inspiration they said upon the morrow, 
Let these Pilgrim Churches, small and great, seeing what God 
has laid upon them, in next December, when the rolling- 
year shall bring around the 'Sabbath that leads on the anni- 
versary of the Mayflower, let all these scattered sons of New 
England, as if gathered at a thanksgiving feast, lift up a 
psalm of thankfulness together for the memory of the fathers 
and their work, and let them make a monumental oflering 
which shall establish the Churches of the Puritans as the 
towers and bulwarks of the land. 

Brethren, the time has come ! Not the council only, 
but the Pilgrims ; not the Pilgrims only, but the God of the 
Pilgrims, is calling for our full measure of devotion. 

As I look around me, I am reminded that I speak to 
many who, according to tlie flesh, cannot deduce their 
lineage from the Pilgrim stock, and who might almost think 
that they had no share in the great inheritance. We are 
gathered here from all c{uarters of the land — sons of New 
Jersey first moulded by Conuecticut Puritans ; sons of New 
York, a portion of whose territory was once included within 
the limits of New England ; and some have followed free- 
dom's westward star in the track of the Mayflower across 
the rolling ocean. But Plymouth Rock is not a stone. It 
is a principle. The line of descent is not blood in the veins, 
but freedom in the heart. If ye have the fathers' iaith, then 
are ye heirs according to the promise. As mendjei-s of this 
Church of Christ, attesting the Pilgrim faith and establisned 
upon the Pilgrim polity, dedicated, as I trust, to those grand 
objects of civil and religious liberty for which the Pilgrinjs 
left their native land, we all have a right by the heraldry of 
heaven, to claim them as our peculiar ancestry, to rejoice in 
the priceless inheritance which they have bequeathed us, 
and as we follow Ilobinson and Winthrop and Carver and 
Bradford in their ascendinii; flight from the toil and victory 
of earth to exclaim with filial gratitude, and pride, and love, 



32 Tin: iML(iKiM Ti:Mi*ij;-i!rii,i>i;Hs. 

"MyFatlicr! my Father ! the diariotis ol' Israel and the 
horstMiieii thereof" ! " 

Soti-s oi" the Pil!j;riiii.s, ai'e yon ready, then, for action ? Do 
you have at heart the moral desolation olthe nation debauched 
by slavery and blasted by war ? How shall we better show 
our love to Jesus than by imitatinu' those who voyaged 
hither not for their own sake but for the advancement of the 
kingdom of" Christ / Where in all the world is the field 
whiter for the harvest than among the enfranchised popula- 
tion of both races at the South '! And how can we do a 
higher service for the Master than by laying the foundations 
of Christian Churches, honoring God and loving man, in the 
centres of all those mighty empires of the people which lie 
in the pathway of the sun from the surges of the Atlantic 
to the murnuu" of the streams that wash the Pacific's golden 
strand? Plant there New England Churches and you shall 
have New England CluMstians. Now, in this formative, this 
transitional period is the proper moment for establishing 
them. This winter da}'^ is the moral spring-time in which 
to scatter all our seed. 

And are you true to 3'our country — anxious to adopt 
such measures as shall best secure the nation from such 
awful perils as tliose through which it has just struggled? 
Do you think that if the South had been pi'rmeated with 
New England institutions we should ever have had to tremble 
for the ark of God, and follow in the sad procession to bewail 
300,000 dead ? If the streams of New England influence 
had flowed southward as they did westward, would not the 
South have been as loyal as the great heart of the West ? 
And now that the armies of the Rebellion are disbanded, 
and the Rebellion itself still lives in tlit; souls of the southern 
people, exasperating them against tin; freedmen on the one 
hand and against the hated " Yankees " on the other, what 
better garrison can you find than a New England (Mnirch, 
and what better standing army than the members of that 
Church, softening the asperities of war with (Mn"istian kind- 
ness, teaching men their duty to their fcllow-nien, and bow- 



THE PILGRIM TEMl'LE-HUILDEHS. 33 

ing down together before the coinnioii Father, whose gifts 
are liberty and peace ? 

Not only, tiieu, as lovers of New England, but as lovers 
of onr whole country, barring up tin; pathway to any future 
destruction ; yes, as a thank-offering to the God of our fathers 
for sparing the nation which they founded, we are called to 
build these institutions in the West and South. 

Never did so memorable a day usher so sublime an 
enterprise as this simultaneous ofiering of three thousand 
Pilgrim Churches to establish the faith and freedom of their 
ancestors over a territory so vast that, although aiming to 
be contemporaneous, when we shall have finished our memo- 
rial service the New Englanders of the Pacific shall not have 
yet begun. As I think upon the magnitude of such an un- 
dertaking, I almost tremble lest the children shall not prove 
themselves worthy of the old stock — lest, engrossed in their 
own comforts and successes, they shrink from the sacrifice 
which is demanded. 

Yet I feel an inspiration in me that tlie work shall all 
be finished. This snow is an omen of victory.^ As if God 
had sent it to be a messenger, it leads us back to that first 
forefathers' day, when, amid wild men and wild beasts in the 
unbroken wilderness, not fathers only, but mothers also, were 
exposed to the storms of winter, and had not where to lay 
their heads. The air is full of voices. Every memorial 
flake that drops its whiteness around our beautifid taber- 
nacle and our luxurious dwellings, bids us with more elo- 
quence than human lips can master, to imitate, according to 
our poor fashion, the sacrifice of those immortal men who, 
while laying the foundations for posterity amid hardships 
that call for tears, said with such touching pathos : " When 
we are in our graves, it will be all one whether we have 
died on beds of down or locks of straw." 

Yes ! ye immortal heroes, or rather saints in light, we 
will remember you this day. We will look with pride and 



1 The snow was falling dnrinor the delivery of the discourse. 



•■}4 THE PILORIM TKMl'LK-IU'ILDEKS. 

thankfulness upon this Zion which ye builded for the eoniin£r 
ages. W(! will mark well your ghjrious bulwarks, and tell 
all your granite towers. We will huihl up your spiritual 
palaces, and in monumental sanctuaries peqietuate your 
fame to the generation tbllowing. 

And this mighty nation which by Faith ye saw afar, 
coming up out of great tribulation with its robes all washed 
in blood, shall be leavened with your life, consecrated to that 
Christ to whom ye gave it on the rock, and girded with the 
omnipotence of justice, shall be established in your faith 
and freedom, 

"Till the waves of the Bay where the Mayflower lay 
Shall foam and freeze no more." 



APPENDIX. 



|lfdnvatiou of ^aith 

AFFIRMED BY THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES, 
ON BURIAL HILL, AT PLYMOUTH, JUNE 22, 1805. 

Standing by the rock wliei'e the Pilgrims set foot upon these shores, upon 
the spot where they worshipped God, and among the graves of the early 
generations, we, Elders and Messengers of the Congregational Churches of 
the United States, in National Council assembled — like them, acknowledging 
no rule of faith but the Word of God — do now declare our adherence to the 
faith and order of the apostolic and primitive churches held by our fathers, 
and substantially as embodied in the confessions and platforms which our 
Synods of 1648 and 1680 set forth or re-affirmed. We declare that the ex- 
perience of the nearly two and a half centuries which have elapsed since the 
memorable day when our sires founded here a Christian Commonwealth, with 
all the development of new forms of error since their times, has only deep- 
ened our confidence in the faith and polity of those fathers. We bless God 
for the inheritance of these doctrines. We invoke the help of the Divine 
Redeemer, that, through the presence of the promised Comforter, he will 
enable us to transmit them in purity to our children. 

In the times that are before us as a nation — times at once of duty and of 
danger — we rest all our hope in the gospel of the Son of God. It was the 
grand peculiarity of our Puritan fathers, that they held this gospel, not 
merely as the ground of their personal salvation, but as declaring the worth 
of man by the incarnation and sacrifice of the Son of God ; and therefore 
api^lied its principles to elevate society, to regulate education, to civilize hu- 
manity, to purify law, to reform the church and the state, and to assert and 
defend liberty ; in short, to mould and redeem, by its all-transforming energy, 
everything that l>elongs to man in his individual and social relations. 

It was the fiiith of our fathers, that gave us this free land in which we 
dwell. It is by this faith only that we can transmit to our children a free 
and happy, because a (Christian, conmion wealth. 

We hold it to be a distinctive excellence of our Congregational system, 
that it exalts that which is more above that which is less important, and, by 
the simplicity of its organization, facilitates, in communities where the popu- 
lation is limited, the union of all true believers in one Christian church ; and 
that the division of such connnunities into several weak and jealous societies, 
holding the same conmion faith, is a sin against the unity of the b(Kly of 
Christ, and at once the shamo and scandal of Cluist(>ndom. 



;3G APPENDIX. 

We rejoice tluit, tliroufih the influenee of our free system of apostolic- 
order, we can hold fellowsliip witli all wlio acknowledge Christ, and act elli- 
ciently in the work of restoring unity to the divided church, and of bringing 
back harmony and peace among all " who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sin- 
cerity." 

'J'hus recognizing the unity of the church of Christ in all the world, and 
knowing that we are but one branch of Christ's jjcople. while adhering to 
our peculiar faith and order, we extend to all l)elievei-s tlie hand of Christian 
lellowship upon the basis of those great fundamental truths in which all 
Christians should agree. With them we confess our faith in God — the 
h'ather, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; in Jesus Christ, the incarnate AVord, 
who is exalted to be our Redeemer and King; and in the Holy Comfoi'ter, 
who is present in the church to regenerate and sanctify tlie soul. 

With the whole Church, we confess the common sinfulness and ruin of 
our race, and acknowledge that it is only through the work accomplished by 
the life and expiatory death of Christ that believers in Him are justified 
before God. receive the remission of sins, and through the presence and grace 
of the Holy Comforter, are delivered from the power of sin, and perfected in 
holiness. 

We believe also in tlie organized and visible Church, in the ministry of 
the word, in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper, in the resur- 
rection of the body, and in the final judgment, the issues of which are eternal 
life and everlasting punishment. 

We receive these truths on the testimony of God, given through prophets 
and apostles, and in the life, the miracles, the death, the resurrection, of his 
Son, our Divine Redeemer — a testimony preserved for the Church in the 
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, which were composed by holy 
men as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 

Affirming now our belief that those who thus hold " one faith, one Lord, 
one baptism," together constitute the one catholic Church, the several house- 
liolds of which, though called by different names, are the one body of Christ, 
and that these memliers of his body are sacredly bound to keep " the unity of 
the spirit in the bond of peace," we declare that we will co-operate with all 
who hold these truths. With them we will carry the gospel into every part 
of this land, and with them we will go into all the world, and " preach the 
gospel to every creature." May He to whom " all power is given in heaven 
and earth" fulfill the promise which is all our ho^ie : " Lo, I am with yon 
alwav, even to tlu' end of the world." Amen. 



APPENDIX. 37 



gurbl fiir. 



June. 18K5. 



Morning on tlie pines of Plymouth 

Breakcth with a song of June, 
Cloudless morning cahnly climbing 

To the pomp of perfect noon. 

Far away the peaceful waters, 

Drowsing in the dreamy bay, 
Scarcely stir the island shadows 

Where of old the Mayflower lay. 

At our feet the starry daisies. 

Springing from the Pilgrims' dust, 

Turning death itself to glory, 
F'itly tell the I'ilgrims' trust. 

They in storms of dark December, 

Scions of a martyr stock, 
Praised the Lord for all His mercies, 

Kneeling there upon the rock. 

Praised Him while the blast was roaring. 
While the surges smote the strand ; 

Praised Him while their hearts were yearning 
With their love for fatherland. 

In the wilds of death they wrestled. 
Seeking what by faith they saw ; 
' Little matter what they died on — 
Beds of down or locks of straw." 

Little recked they pain or peril. 

Ocean wave or scalfold block. 
They who bore the name of Pilgrim, 

They who built upon the rock. 

For afar they caught a vision — 

Morning merging into noon, 
Snow-wreaths melting into blossoms. 

Dark December changed to June. 



38 APPENDIX. 

Now at length that day has broken, 
When, with garments rolled in blood, 

Lo ! a free, victorious nation 
Lifts itststainless hands to God. 

Then with eyes still wet with weeping, 
But with hearts heroic still, 

Came the children of the Pilgrims, 
For an hour on Burial Hill. 

There is queenly ]\[assachusett,s. 
With her fair New p]ngland train ; 

There the heirs of El Dorado, 
AVinding fi-om the western main. 

There a thousand Pilgrim churches, 
From the continent's expanse : 

There the scattered flocks descended 
From the slaughtered saints of France. 

There the kindred hearts of England, 
Beating as in days of yore, 

Twine tlie speech of Vane and Milton 
Round the name the fathers bore. 

Thus defiled the long procession 
Past the rock and past the waves. 

Onward up the lull of I'lymouth, 
Till it reached the ancient graves. 

Then the solemn Declaration 
Swelled upon the sunmier air. 

Bringing saintly shapes so near us 
That we bowc'd our heads in prayer. 

Till with every hand uplifted, 

Every knee upon the sod. 
Every heart in consecration 

Cave itself anew to God. 

Praising Him for all the fathers 

Wrought for God and wrought l\>v man, 

Asking Him for grace to finish 
What the Pikrini sires betran. 



J. .M. li. 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



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